Graphical user interfaces (GUI) displayed on a monitor of a computer workstation have proven effective as a means of both conveying information and facilitating user input device use by one or more users to enter and/or modify the data displayed in the GUI. A GUI that presents data in a tabular form provides quick access to a variety of interrelated data values as identified by the columns and rows of the table.
One advantage of a tabular presentation of data on a GUI is that often the GUI is configured such that the data values displayed on the table may be sorted according to one or more of the data types selected by the user.
In one embodiment each data type is given its own column with a column header identifying the data value. This embodiment most closely replicates that of a standard or paper table configured in the GUI.
A drawback of this embodiment is that listing each data type in a separate column with a separate header can increase the width of the table and thus may require either more GUI space or alternatively, requires a user to scroll the table horizontally in order to view all of the data values. The alternative embodiment aims to solve this problem by combining the display of a plurality of data types into a single multi-valued column.
Under typical tabular GUI formats, two types of tables and sorting user interfaces may be implemented. In the first embodiment, each data value is assigned to a particular column with a single header identifying the data value in each column. In this embodiment, each additional data type requires an additional column and adds to the overall table width. These tables may become too wide to be displayed in a limited display area. In the second embodiment, few headers or none at all are identified for the table and multiple types of data values may be displayed in each column of the table. In these embodiments, the user must typically use a drop down menu to select the data type by which it is desired that the table be sorted.